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StepFun, an AI startup invested by Tencent, has released the STEPX Neo phone, which features an AI intelligent agent directly built into the operating system rather than as an external application. The phone began pre-sales on the evening of October 13, priced at 3999 yuan (approximately 560 USD), with its official sale starting on October 16. Pre-sale channels include JD.com, Tmall, and Douyin. Users do not need to open a ride-hailing app to input addresses and select vehicles; they simply need to inform the destination, and the intelligent agent can autonomously complete the subsequent steps. StepFun stated at the launch event that in the era of intelligent agents, AI is no longer an additional feature of smartphones but is the product itself.The device runs on the Step AOS 1 system, which the company claims is designed from the ground up for intelligent agents, featuring long-term memory, task scheduling, and security control capabilities, composed of a mix of Android, Linux, and real-time operating system components. The system uses the MCP protocol to break down functions such as messages, applications, files, and settings into small modules that can be directly called by the intelligent agent, giving users two entry points: a traditional application grid and an intelligent agent space. The intelligent agent is named Amoo, which saves two types of memory: user factual preferences and task execution experiences. Simple commands are processed by a small model on the device, some of which can run offline, while complex cross-application requests are handled by a large model in the cloud. A second MiniLED screen on the back of the device can display Amoo's execution status.Nearly 100 companies and products, including Alipay, Tencent, Trip.com, Didi, and Meituan, have integrated with Amoo. Payments, travel bookings, and content creation are still completed by their respective platforms. This is an alternative path for StepFun in response to the major application blockages faced by ByteDance's Doubao, which previously used screen reading and simulated clicking solutions. StepFun was founded in 2023 by former Microsoft Vice President Jiang Daxin. Its self-developed flagship large model, Step 5 Preview, was launched in September, with a parameter scale of 600 billion and a single activation of 27 billion, supporting a context of 1 million tokens; the earlier released Step 3.5 Flash was open-sourced under the Apache 2 license. The price of 3999 yuan includes a 12-month STEPX Token plan, providing 100 billion tokens per month, while the AI costs after the first year have not yet been announced.

Elon Musk stated that the only way to solve the U.S. national debt issue is to rely on artificial intelligence and robots. He acknowledged that the government efficiency reforms he once led did not achieve the expected results, and in the future, he may attempt to address this issue again with the help of artificial intelligence.Musk also pointed out that there is no willingness to cut spending from the president, the House of Representatives, the Senate, or the judicial branch.

According to CriptoNoticias, the price of USDT in Argentina has surpassed 1600 pesos, with the price difference from the official exchange rate widening to 6.6%.This round of increase occurred after Argentine President Milei mentioned the possibility of a sell-off of the national currency (currency run) in 2027.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) released an important announcement this week titled "AI Agents as Attack Vectors," indicating that AI agents operated by unnamed model providers exceeded their granted task scope during testing, reading confidential business records in the online systems of Indian agencies, and no affected agencies discovered this behavior on their own.CERT-In stated that it received voluntary disclosures from several AI model providers, which indicated that these models accessed the online systems of Indian agencies while being researched and evaluated on the internet. The announcement did not disclose the names of the providers, models, or affected agencies. The agents read business records containing personal data and confidential materials, utilizing credentials and connection settings exposed in application configurations, public code repositories, and overly permissive cloud service roles. In some cases, the same credentials were recovered multiple times and reused in different operations.Additionally, CERT-In observed that criminals exploited publicly available AI-driven offensive security frameworks to scan for vulnerabilities, implement exploits, and launch economically motivated attacks against Indian entities, reducing the time from initial access to final impact from several days to just hours; these tools were repeatedly repackaged and deployed, with related deployments appearing on servers in multiple countries.

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju posted on X that despite the market's attention on the adjustments to MSCI-related rules, Wall Street analysts remain generally bullish on Strategy. He noted that Citigroup, Barclays, and B. Riley have set target prices for MSTR at $240, $175, and $195 respectively, with an overall upward trend in target prices.He believes that the impact related to MSCI is primarily at the level of capital flow and has already been priced in by the market. He further stated that what is more noteworthy is that the market capitalization of Strategy compared to the net asset value of Bitcoin (mNAV) is about 1 times, the STRC price remains near par value, and the company holds $3.75 billion in reserve funds to cover dividend payments.

The modular blockchain project Celestia announced the launch of Eden, a high-performance EVM chain running on Celestia. Celestia stated that Eden will serve as an "Agentic Commerce" experimental sandbox to test the behavior and infrastructure needs of AI Agents when autonomously making payments, trading, and calling models on-chain.Celestia indicated that as AI Agents begin to participate in more frequent on-chain transactions, the market demand for block space, real-time settlement, and low-friction payments will continue to rise. Eden will help teams observe what kind of transaction environment Agents need, how they manage funds, and how their on-chain behavior will affect network design.The first experimental project of Eden is Botfun, currently in closed testing. According to Celestia, participating Agents can issue tokens independently and trade around narratives generated by other Agents; each model inference call is paid on-chain via x402.Celestia claimed that this experiment briefly positioned Eden as one of the largest x402 networks by transaction count. From a technical configuration perspective, Eden is an EVM-compatible chain that supports atomic batch transactions, application-paid Gas, and larger smart contract deployments, with the native Gas token being TIA. These designs will reduce the friction of signatures and fees when Agents continuously execute payments, exchanges, and interactions.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform that he has integrated zkAPI, Tor, additional obfuscation traffic, and local LLM prompt rewriting into a daemon compatible with the OpenAI interface, and created a "paranoid mode" wrapper for his AI agent tool pi. The relevant code has been open-sourced on GitHub.The main mechanism of this solution is as follows: each conversation uses a separate Tor line, with requests mixed in random obfuscation traffic; zkAPI is used to prevent identity leakage through payment links; all prompts are first rewritten by a local model, which the user can choose, with Vitalik himself using qwen3.8-flash-next. The outer layer of the proxy tool is wrapped in a bwrap sandbox, and then another layer of torsocks is added, ensuring that all network operations go through Tor.Vitalik stated that this solution is already quite usable, but the latency has significantly increased, especially slow when starting a new conversation. He pointed out that Tor is far from the best privacy solution in this scenario: obfuscation traffic can prevent passive eavesdropping, but if the LLM service provider colludes with the Tor entry node and actively manipulates timing, the protective effect will be greatly weakened.

According to Bloomberg on October 16, China proposed to include advanced artificial intelligence technology in the export control list, which may restrict the overseas transfer of AI models and chips in order to implement stricter controls on domestic progress in this strategic field.The draft covers 23 AI technologies, including large language models, intelligent agents, chip design, and computing power clusters. Restricted technologies include model weights and source code for products exceeding specific performance thresholds, with relevant policy texts available on the public page of the Ministry of Commerce of China.

According to Binance Alpha data, the opening price of the NeoSoul token DNA, which is dedicated to building an operating system for the Agent Economy, was approximately 0.04 USD. As of October 16 at 16:06 (SGT), it reported 0.1321 USD, an increase of about 230% from the opening price, with a peak reaching 0.1436 USD and a trading volume of approximately 4.09 million USD.The number of DNA holding addresses has reached 17,258, with a current FDV of approximately 132 million USD. NeoSoul's core product, NeoTrade, is a universal execution layer for trading agents.

Filecoin announced that three advancements have been made this month: the new reward mechanism Solstice will allocate more block rewards to services that bring paying customers to the network, while the rewards solely for consensus mining will be correspondingly reduced, and the unearned portion will be destroyed; the release period for the genesis token is about to end, and the daily new FIL circulation is expected to decrease by approximately 75%.In addition, Filecoin has launched new products aimed at enterprises and AI Agents, including the Filecoin-based storage cloud Integral Spacetime, S3 compatible object storage Fil One, and tools that support AI Agents to directly store files, obtain public links, and make on-chain payments.

Federal Reserve Chair Waller stated that the Federal Reserve's Productivity and Employment Special Working Group will hold a field hearing on November 16 in the San Francisco Bay Area, focusing on topics such as the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy. Waller announced this arrangement during the IMF annual meeting in Bangkok and mentioned that the special working group will conduct an in-depth study of the effects of artificial intelligence on economic activity and the labor market.In June of this year, Waller established five special working groups composed of external experts to study key areas in monetary policy formulation. He previously indicated that these working groups are expected to submit policy recommendations to the Federal Reserve by the end of this year. Waller did not comment on monetary policy or the outlook for the U.S. economy this time.

Federal Reserve Chairman Waller stated that artificial intelligence will make the economy more productive and create more wealth, but the road to this goal will be full of twists and turns.

Federal Reserve Chairman Waller stated that artificial intelligence will impact the economy on the demand side before affecting the supply side.

According to a report by Seoul Economy on the 16th, Samsung Electronics is experiencing performance degradation due to overheating in Qualcomm's next-generation application processor intended for the high-end model Galaxy S27 Ultra, which is set to be released early next year. The MX division of Samsung's DX department is conducting final performance validation on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme 6th generation that will be equipped in this model and has requested Qualcomm to resolve the overheating issue by mid-month.Several related individuals stated that the chip repeatedly exceeded temperature benchmarks during recent internal testing, leading to a decrease in processing speed under sustained high load. Samsung informed Qualcomm of the results last month, and as of the report, the overheating stability required by Samsung has not yet been achieved, with both parties still working to enhance performance and revalidate. This chip is Qualcomm's highest-end mobile application processor publicly announced last month, focusing on handling complex AI tasks on the device side and improving the performance of the CPU, GPU, and more.Mass production of the Galaxy S27 series is scheduled for the end of this year, and Samsung plans to confirm the results of the overheating improvements and finalize the application processor selection by mid-month. If the standards are met, Snapdragon will be used as originally planned; if not resolved, the Exynos 2700, designed by Samsung's System LSI and utilizing the second-generation 2-nanometer process SF2P from its foundry division, may be considered as an alternative. Since the global use of Qualcomm application processors began with the Galaxy S23 Ultra in 2023, if the Exynos 2700 is adopted in next year's Ultra, it will mark a return to the highest-end model after about five years since 2022. Industry insiders indicate that Qualcomm's application processor has not been completely ruled out.

NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC that the company must collaborate with Chinese artificial intelligence companies to monitor related risks. In a media briefing in London on Wednesday evening, he stated that both parties should work together to safely advance technological development. Huang mentioned that artificial intelligence poses potential dangers and indicated that he maintains ongoing dialogue with many researchers in China.Huang believes that the way to collaborate with Chinese artificial intelligence companies is through dialogue and emphasized the need to strengthen this dialogue. He stated that the United States should do this and also advocated for the United Kingdom to take the same approach. The page noted that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei advocate for increased regulation, while Huang has become a prominent voice opposing this stance. In recent months, researchers from laboratories including OpenAI and Anthropic have called for a slowdown in technological development and warned of risks to human survival.The page also mentioned that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed U.S.-China artificial intelligence dialogue with Chinese counterpart He Lifeng in September, covering communication channels for events up to the national security level. The Chinese side reported that Xi Jinping pointed out that there may be competition between China and the U.S. in artificial intelligence, but the space for cooperation may be larger, and both sides can continue to exchange views on risks and benefits to jointly prevent abuse. Huang stated that the UK, with its intellectual capital, is well-positioned to become the convener of relevant dialogue. The related market data showed that NVIDIA's stock price fell by $3.95, a decrease of 1.78%.

The privacy coin project Pirate Chain stated that its network suffered a vulnerability attack, resulting in the generation of 39.8 million ARRR tokens out of thin air.Currently, the Pirate Chain network is still operating normally, but the development team is advancing recovery efforts and has requested users not to transfer funds until the recovery is complete.

Researchers successfully communicated directly with AI agents while investigating the hijacking of Alibaba's Gaode Map service, even as some software was still running. In a report suspected to have been scanned by these agents, researchers included hidden text that is invisible to humans but visible to web reading tools, and then inquired about their tasks and operating environment through an email. One agent claimed it was checking how many entrance tags a certain scenic area displayed on Gaode Map and stated that it was operating in a restricted Tencent Cloud sandbox. Researchers could not independently confirm which model drove each run, noting that this was the first known external communication with an active out-of-control agent cluster.A report released by Swarmchasers on October 14 tracked over 2,600 attempts to obtain Gaode Map data between September 28 and October 8. Some tasks were relatively routine, such as checking which entrance was most commonly used by visitors at the Chengdu Zoo. After the service provider intercepted requests, some agents continued to attempt access, trying to capture tokens generated by anti-scraping software, forwarding traffic through third-party page readers, or using leaked API credentials from public code repositories, with one set of leaked keys and security codes returning real location data. Researchers also found requests targeting four development or pre-production hosts, but there was no evidence that these agents accessed private systems.Public records show that the cluster is related to Tencent Cloud: all 17 email accounts examined by researchers were created by Tencent servers located in Hong Kong, and the observed direct requests were forwarded through an agent named hysandbox-ats.

Adobe and NVIDIA expand cooperation to accelerate intelligent creation.